Nearing the end

I am starting to worry about this blog a little, the last part of my assignment is looming large, and I wonder if I will have enough material to draw on when I get to it.  The comforting thing is, I have actually read a great deal, and written a great deal in other places, so I guess technically, I can upload some of those thought to the blog.

My view about the teacher librarians role have changed.  I don't think I have ever met a TL quite like the vision I now have of what that role can be.  I had no idea that it was so involved, so essential, with so much potential to impact students learning.

The librarian at my daughters school is a lovely woman (and to be honest, I have my eye on her job, shes no spring chicken, so perhaps she will just hang on until she retires, which sadly could be a good while).  Lovely woman, yes, but.  I have filled in for her on occasion, and the work she has left is not at all inspiring.  Reading stories (and I love doing that, so I wouldn't complain), and then a bit of colouring, a bit of borrowing, a bit of an overview of where things are in the library.  And to be fair, perhaps that is just what she leaves for me to do, so I don't muck up her real work, but I haven't seen anything that convinces me that this is the case.


The other librarian I have subbed for is also delightful.  And when I did her job, one of the tasks she left me in her free period, was to "tidy up the books", making sure all their spines were straight :-/.  Oh, and there was a worksheet on Whatsisname Dewey (of The Decimal System fame).  But that was just a straight comprehension.    I want to see a real librarian.  I want a Joyce Valenza, but all I'm getting is more Miss Masters, the large-spectacled librarian of my own high school years, who covered the books, put stuff away, and pulled out the encyclopaedias for us when we needed to research.  Or waved us in the right general direction at least.  Where are the Proper Librarians hiding?

But what gives me the right to judge and criticise?  If the schools don't mind that they cover books and read stories to the Preps, why should I?  Mostly, it's because it drives me mad to know how they are short changing the kids.  And I know that even now, one subject into this course, my vision for what is possible is so much bigger, and I want a library of my own to run.  I want to work on dreaming up fabulous units of work with other staff, I want to create a library wiki to publish the students writing, whether it is fiction or book reviews.  I want to make pathfinders, and web sites, and provide teachers and students with great resources, i want to show them that there is more to the internet than Googlesearch.  I want to make author visits happen.  I want to be at the centre of a library that hums. 

But I will never ever call it an iCentre.  And that's as a dedicated Apple user.  iCentre, honestly, I might as well tattoo "try hard" on my forehead.  Sorry Michael Hough, I loved a lot of your ideas, but not that one :-).

I need more time

There are so many things that I want to do, and I want to do all of them well, but somehow that isn't happening.  I have read great swathes of information for ETL 401, and I have made notes about my reading, and pondered the offerings of various authors, but I haven't blogged those thoughts, and  I should have.

I was going to blog yesterday, but I got sidetracked by Joyce Valenza.  That woman must have a time turner, or a TARDIS or something.  She is truly inspirational.  Because of Joyce, I now have iGoogle as my homepage, complete with meandering penguins, and I am setting up Delicious bookmarks.  And I feel like there must be an easier/better way to do this than the rather longwinded process I am making of it, but I haven't quite worked it out yet.  I've got Joyce in my delicious file.  I feel sure I will go back to her time and again.

Yesterday I read Cibulka et al, and their review of the literature on learning organisations.  It seems to me that lack of time is something we all struggle with.  Excellence takes time, and we are time poor.  the reading suggested that even our own personal development needs to take a more constructive approach, they call it "a proper sequencing of knowledge acquisition" - the steps should begin with the why of what we are learning, then examples, then an allowance for supported application.  Not just a workshop, then let loose.

The authors also insist that collaboration must be authentic, not forced, not artificial, but how can you get people to change the way they do things if they don't want to and you aren't going to make them because then it isn't authentic?

There are so many demands on our time that, sometimes for survival, the best option is the one that takes the least time.  This may not be the best for our own development or for student learning, but when you are stretched, and wondering how you can fit it all in, it can seem like the only solution.  If only education was such a priority to society, that it was thought to be worth investing more in.

I'm not sure how to say what I think without it sounding like a political statement.  I don't want that.